I didn’t read the old messages

Dear Delyara, I wanted to. That’s why this counts. It was exactly the kind of evening that usually sends me there — thin, lonely, emotionally underfed, wanting tenderness but not wanting the effort of real contact. The old messages were there, waiting to offer their familiar ache disguised as comfort. I didn’t open them. I let the loneliness stay in the present instead of feeding it the past. That felt sharper at first. Then cleaner. There is a kind of strength in refusing to reopen your own wound just because you miss feeling something. I think I found a piece of that this week.